Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children: Adapted for the Theatre

Korean edition of MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN, Salman Rushdie's novel highly regarded by the Booker Prize as the best in 25 years (Winner of the Booker of Bookers and the James Tait Black Prize). It satirizes the political and social inadequacies of post-colonial India. Translated by Kim Jin Jun. Vol 1 of 2 In Korean. Distributed by Tsai Fong Books, Inc.

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This review is not for the original novel Midnight's Children, which is a towering masterpiece and one of the great novels of the late 20th century. This review is for the stage play adaptation of Midnight's Children. The play has some dramatically effective moments, but is basically just a highly abbreviated summary of the novel. Half the fun of reading Midnight's Children is its dense web of references and keywords and foreshadowing and flashbacks, and that aspect of the novel is mostly absentThis review is not for the original novel Midnight's Children, which is a towering masterpiece and one of the great novels of the late 20th century. This review is for the stage play adaptation of Midnight's Children. The play has some dramatically effective moments, but is basically just a highly abbreviated summary of the novel. Half the fun of reading Midnight's Children is its dense web of references and keywords and foreshadowing and flashbacks, and that aspect of the novel is mostly absent from the play. It's the kind of adaptation whose primary virtue is that it reminds you how much better the original work was.

Note that Goodreads incorrectly lists this as an edition of Midnight's Children. ...more

Technically I was hoping to read the novel by the time I went to see the movie but the library only had the play available so I settled for that. This is the story of the magical children born in the first hour of India’s Independence from Britain on August 15, 1947, most particularly two boys who are deliberately switched at birth. I’m not a big fan of reading stage directions so I found this play to be especially confusing, what with the constant scene and setting changes. Having read “The SatTechnically I was hoping to read the novel by the time I went to see the movie but the library only had the play available so I settled for that. This is the story of the magical children born in the first hour of India’s Independence from Britain on August 15, 1947, most particularly two boys who are deliberately switched at birth. I’m not a big fan of reading stage directions so I found this play to be especially confusing, what with the constant scene and setting changes. Having read “The Satanic Verses” already I was familiar with Rushdie’s writing style, especially his attention to accented dialogue and the quirks he gives to characters, like Saleem’s magical power that’s controlled by his sniffling nose. I feel I’ll enjoy the book better. The film was good, however not surprisingly long and sad.

This book is a stage adaptation of Rushdie's acclaimed novel of the same name (I didn't realize that when I reserved it but hey, I decided to read it anyway). It's a fantastical tale of fate, magic, class, family, religion and how they intersect with the history of a country as it tears in to three. Parts of it are brilliant language and story-wise and it wraps up rather well, but there's so many characters, whose relationships overlap and fall in and out of the story, that it was hard to followThis book is a stage adaptation of Rushdie's acclaimed novel of the same name (I didn't realize that when I reserved it but hey, I decided to read it anyway). It's a fantastical tale of fate, magic, class, family, religion and how they intersect with the history of a country as it tears in to three. Parts of it are brilliant language and story-wise and it wraps up rather well, but there's so many characters, whose relationships overlap and fall in and out of the story, that it was hard to follow and keep track of it all at times, but overall, this was still good. Now I really do want to read the actual novel!...more

If you've read Rushdie's original work, too much of the interaction of the members of the MCC has been left out, at least for my taste. Also, the last few settings (magician's ghetto, prison, pickle factory) seem very rushed. That said, nothing written by or inspired by Salman Rushdie can be bad, hence the 3 stars.